Ukraine war: Russian strike on Kharkiv hardware store kills 12

A Ukrainian firefighter intervenes to extinguish a fire at a hardware store following a Russian strike, in Kharkiv, on Saturday. Photo: AFP

• A Russian bomb struck a home-improvement superstore in Kharkiv on Saturday, killing several people and wounding dozens, a Ukrainian regional governor said.
• Russia's TASS state news agency cited a security source claiming that a missile strike destroyed a 'military store and command post' inside the shopping centre

The death toll from a Russian strike on a hardware superstore in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv rose to 12 on Sunday, the interior minister said, with President Volodymyr Zelensky condemning the attack as "vile".

Igor Klymenko, Ukrainian interior minister, said that the fire in the Epitsentr superstore had spread over 13,000 square metres and injured 43 people. Another 16 are still missing, he said on Sunday.

"It took more than 16 hours to extinguish a fire in a Kharkiv construction hypermarket caused by targeted Russian strikes," he said on Telegram. "Russian shelling killed 12 people and injured 43 others".

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Forensics experts and investigators were still working to identify bodies in the ruins of the Epitsentr DIY store in the northeastern outskirts of the city, Klymenko said.

Earlier, the Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said two of the people who had been killed worked in the hypermarket, adding that the city had been under "massive rocket fire all day".

Still wearing her uniform, Lyubov, a cleaner at the store, recalled how she escaped the building.

"It happened all of a sudden. We didn't understand at first, everything went dark and everything started falling on our heads," she said.

"It was good that my phone lit up, thanks to the flashlight I found where to go, but in front of us everything was burning already."

Zelensky condemned the daylight attack on an "obviously civilian" target.

French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X that Russia's strikes on the store were "unacceptable".

"France shares the pain of the Ukrainians and remains fully mobilised alongside them," he said.

Russia's TASS state news agency cited a security source claiming that a missile strike destroyed a "military store and command post" inside the shopping centre.

The regional governor said there was "no contact with some of the staff" and "according to our information, visitors could still be in the building".

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, is just a few dozen kilometres from the border and regularly comes under attack from Russian missiles.

Synegubov said the city was under "massive rocket fire all day" on Saturday.

Later on Saturday, another strike hit the centre of Kharkiv, wounding 14 in an area containing a post office, a hairdresser and a cafe, the city's mayor Igor Terekhov said.

Zelensky had visited Kharkiv on Friday and met with officials to discuss the defence of the surrounding region.

On Saturday, he urged world leaders to supply Ukraine with "sufficient air defence protection" to "prevent such terrorist attacks".

"Only madmen like Putin are capable of killing and terrorising people in such a vile way," he said, referring to the Russian president who ordered his troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

He also urged US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to attend a peace summit in Switzerland next month.

"I am appealing to the leaders of the world who are still aside from the global efforts of the global peace summit: to President Biden, the leader of the United States, and to President Xi, the leader of China," Zelensky said in a video message on Sunday.

"Please support the peace summit with your personal leadership and participation," he asked, saying that "the efforts of the global majority are the best guarantee that all commitments will be fulfilled".

The high-level conference on the Ukraine war is to be hosted in Luzern on June 15-16 by the Swiss government, which has said it has invited 160 delegations but Russia will not attend.

Biden has not confirmed his attendance and it is not known if China will attend.

Beijing has said that it supports an international peace conference recognised by both Russia and Ukraine.

For Russia, "it is a pleasure to burn," Zelensky said in his message, describing its bombardment of Kharkiv with S-300 missiles and guided aerial bombs.

The latest attacks came after Russia launched a ground offensive in the Kharkiv region on May 10. Ukraine said on Friday that it had managed to halt Moscow's progress and was counter-attacking.

Ukraine's rescue service posted images of firefighters spraying water inside the blazing Epitsentr store building, with the roof torn open and debris strewn around.

Zelensky said the hypermarket had "burned to the ground" and that nearly 60 people had been wounded in Kharkiv throughout the day.

Russia and Ukraine accused each other's forces of attacks along the border on Saturday.

Russia said Ukraine shelled a small town in the Belgorod region, killing two people and wounding 10.

Ukraine said Russia shelled the village of Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, a railway hub in the region of Kharkiv, wounding five, the regional prosecutor's office said.

It said two vehicles came under fire: a car with two passengers and an ambulance with a driver, a paramedic and a 64-year-old patient.

Russia also carried out air strikes on the Kupiansk district, damaging a factory and residential buildings, prosecutors said.

In the eastern Donetsk region, shelling on Saturday killed a 40-year-old woman and wounded four other people, said the head of the regional administration, Vadym Filashkin.

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